The Real Deal Miami

The most expensive RE in the world has no fixed address

The World's luxury apartments for the ultra-wealthy are like no building you've seen before

December 09, 2017 04:00PM

(Front photo by VirtualSteve/Wikimedia Commons; back photo Pixabay)

From TRD New York: The ultra-luxury condo, called The World, that takes the title of the world’s most expensive address sails where its residents whims, not the market, takes it. With 280 staff, the 43,000-ton vessel has 165 apartments and is a full-time home for its wealthy residents.

“You sail to places that you could never go to even on your own yacht,” resident Chris Scatliff, 74, told Bloomberg. He and his wife bought a three-bedroom apartment on the yacht in 2013.

The World receives receives governmental permissions to sail into places no other vessels have been permitted to go, like Russia’s Provideniya Bay. Not to mention Nobel Prize winners who will come aboard to give lectures to the residents from time to time.

“These experiences—you can’t buy them at any price,” said Scatliff.

Since the last individual unit was sold in 2006, about 10 percent of the units are on the market at any given time, according to Bloomberg, but to buy in does not come cheap.

For a potential buyer to become an owner, they must be holding at least $10 million in assets as well as getting approval from at least two residents, passing background checks and footing an annual bill of about $900,000 in maintenance fees. And all that is in addition to the upfront price, which ranges between $1.8 million to $15 million for units sized between 290 square feet to 3,500 square feet.

When the math is done, Bloomberg reports The World’s approximate cost per square foot is somewhere between about $4,300 and $6,200 — shooting past the average price per foot in New York, London, Hong Kong and even, in some cases, Monaco with its average of $5,420 per foot holding the global record.[Bloomberg] — E.K. Hudson